


"You and Me Against the World"

by vanillanemo



Category: Bleach
Genre: AAC 2017, AUideas Advent Calender 2017, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Dragon!Toshiro, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 12:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillanemo/pseuds/vanillanemo
Summary: Piece 1 for AUideas Advent Calender 2017 - Steam VS Smoke AUPrompt:Working in a coffee shop can have its... strangeness... but it has to be said that nothing topped that one person who Character A could’ve sworn was hiding a tiny dragon under the lapel of their jacket.





	"You and Me Against the World"

**Author's Note:**

> Lol this ended up way longer than 700 words. *shrugs* Oh well, I had fun.

“Here’s to graduation! Our four years of hell is finally over!”

Glasses clinked amid the cacophony of cheers, newly ex-students toasting to the completion of their degrees.

Karin drank deeply, the golden ale washing down her throat with bubbly cheer. She and Renji had only just arrived, the last of the group to show up, and this was her first drink of what would surely be many to come.

*

A few hours later, she knew she had been correct. Rangiku, the lucky girl, had a wealthy boyfriend who floated her a large allowance, and so the drinks just kept coming, racking up what would surely be enormous charges on his credit card. (She vehemently denied all accusations of him being her ‘sugar daddy’, but that never stopped anyone from teasing her about it.) They were all at the very least tipsy (though Rukia and Momo, the lightweights of the group, were both definitely in the range of ‘smashed’), and the conversation had run the gauntlet from classes, to horrible professors, to horrible bosses and workplaces.

(“The things we did to get the money for fuckin’ textbooks,” Shuuhei said, with a slight shudder. “Wasn’t that bad,” Renji replied. Of the two strippers, he was easily the more shameless one.)

“Hey Karin,” Rangiku started, in a sing-song voice, “We’ve spent all this time talking about the weird things everyone else had to put up with, what about you? Surely your little dinky-die coffee shop must have had some interesting customers, no?”

Karin snorted in reply, taking another mouthful of her drink. “Yeah, suppose.”

“Come on then, spill it!”

She sat up a little straighter, aware that the group’s attention was mainly on her. “So, you get your normal coffee shop types - the five extra shots guy who you think is probably taking drugs on top of that, the fitness health guru who has low fat soy-milk and then adds like ten packets of sugar, but probably the most memorable of my weird customers was the guy with the dragon.”

Her friends’ faces all displayed disbelief, and she held up a hand to halt the inevitable questions.

“Hear me out, okay guys?”

When they all nodded, she began her story.

“The guy with the dragon. He was a businessman type - tailored suit, used to come in every Tuesday and Wednesday, ‘bout ten, order a flat white - double shot - and a blueberry pastry, then sit at one of the tables and do his work. Had a real nice laptop. He’d work for like an hour and a half, then order another coffee, keep working another hour or so, and buy a sandwich on his way out.

“It’d been like a freaking year or so since he started coming, that Ururu, you guys remember I told you about Ururu? Yeah, well she had noticed that he didn’t just eat the pastry, he used to pull the blueberries out. But like, every time we went to collect the plate, there were no blueberries on it. So, I started keeping a bit of an eye on him. Wanted to see what he did with them.

“I was so confused at first, cause like, he’d just pick one up, and hold it up like near his shoulder, near his lapels, then he’d bring his hand back down and it was gone. I thought maybe he was dropping them, but there were never any on the floor or the seat or anything. And then one day I was cleaning tables when it happened, so I had a better view.

“I swear to god, this guy had a tiny little dragon hiding under his lapel, and he used to feed it blueberries from his pastry.”

The group burst into raucous laughter.

“That’s a fucking great story, Karin,” Renji said. “But like really, a dragon? You could have made it something a bit more believable.”

“It’s true!” she angrily defended. “There really was a tiny dragon. It was white, and, and tiny, and, ugh!” She struggled through the slight haze of her mind to put her recollections into concise words. “I’m not lying about it!”

“Course you’re not lying, just drunk.”

“Oh piss off, Ikkaku. I swear it was real!”

“Yeah, yeah. Oi Yumi, what about you? Had any weird customers with a fucking unicorn tucked into their pockets? Or a mermaid swimming through their hair?”

Yumichika, who worked as a bartender, attempted to sniff haughtily, but then hiccupped. The resulting odd sound brought more laughter from the group, and the conversation moved on, though Karin kept herself out of it.

 _It was real_ , she told herself. _After all, he showed it to you when you asked._

*

It had been a particularly slow day, with no one in the café. Ururu was in the back doing inventory, and wouldn’t come out unless Karin called for her or their terrifying boss showed up. (Ururu seemed to have radar or something, always knew when Sui-Feng was about to arrive a few minutes before she did. It had saved Karin’s job more than once.) Karin had been watching _him_ , and she had noticed him feeding the little dragon again. She waited a few minutes after his plate was empty, before she went to collect it.

When she picked up his plate, he looked up from his computer and smiled at her, saying, “Thank you,” as he did so.

“No problem,” she replied. Then, on a whim, she said, “Hey, can I ask you something, sir?”

“Only if you never call me sir again,” he replied, chuckling. “My name is Sousuke Aizen. And you are?”

“Karin Kurosaki. I um, well, I just wanted to ask, what’s with the tiny dragon?”

He looked shocked for a moment, then composed his face. His eyes however glinted strangely, like he was hiding something. “Dragon? Whatever do you mean, Miss Kurosaki?”

“The tiny dragon that hides under the lapels of your jacket. You feed it the blueberries from your pastry every day when you come in.”

His face remained composed a moment longer, his eyes sweeping her up and down, and Karin had the strangest feeling that she was being measured up, before he smiled.

“Very well observed, Miss Kurosaki. Honestly? I’m not entirely sure where he came from, but I found him years ago, when I was a child. My parents wouldn’t have let me have a pet so I kept him secret. These days I keep the secret for fear of him being taken from me and treated as some kind of zoo exhibit or science experiment.”

Aizen held his hand up, flat and facing towards the ceiling, and brought it to his lapel. The fabric rustled ever so slightly, and then the creature she had only gotten glimpses of before stepped out.

Measuring roughly two inches from head to tip of his tail, the dragon was a silvery white, with scaly limbs, tiny (but sharp looking) talons, and green eyes that glinted in the light like jewels. Karin involuntarily let out a gasp of awe.

“He’s beautiful. Does he have a name?”

“Toshiro. Would you like to hold him?”

“Can I?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the dragon to meet Aizen’s eyes.

“Of course. Here, sit.” He gestured at the empty seat across the table from him, and she did so, setting the plate in her hands back down.

“Hold out your hand,” Aizen instructed gently, and when she did, he moved his hand next to it. Using his spare hand, he tapped his index finger on her palm, and Toshiro moved to where he had tapped. Aizen instantly ran a finger down his back, saying “Good boy.”

“You’ve trained him?” Karin marvelled at the creature in her hands. The talons felt somewhat like tiny pins, sitting just on her skin but not breaking it, the scaly tail sweeping back and forth over her hand as he sniffed her fingers. He felt much cooler than she had expected, almost icy cold in fact.

“Yes. Little things, following, like you just saw, and to keep silent in the presence of people who don’t know about him. He’s actually quite talkative when we’re at home, but I’d hate for him to be captured for being loud in public.”

“That makes sense.” Toshiro suddenly rubbed the side of his face over her fingers, and she cocked her head slightly, wondering what he was doing. Aizen chuckled.

“He likes you, it seems. I’ve a friend who knows about him, and Toshiro does nothing but growl and snarl if he tries to touch him.”

“Well, I’m flattered.”

The door jingled and she looked up to see a customer entering. Sousuke tapped his wrist, just above his cuff line, and Toshiro quickly scampered onto his hand and under the sleeve, out of sight. Karin stood quickly, picking up the plate and Aizen’s empty cup.

“Thank you, Mr. Aizen,” she said, smiling at him.

“Not a problem, and please, do call me Sousuke.” He smiled in return.

“Only if you call me Karin,” she replied.

“As you wish then, Karin.” His lips twisted up a little more, before he turned back to his laptop. Karin walked back behind the counter, where the customer was now waiting.

“Hi! Sorry for the delay, what can I get for you?”

*

She and Sousuke had many more discussions over the months that followed. He was more than happy to indulge her curiosity, whenever things weren’t busy in the café and she could stop and chat. They discussed Toshiro’s eating habits (it seemed that he loved watermelon and pretzels more than anything else, and couldn’t eat pineapples, for some reason - Sousuke suspected it had something to do with the enzyme bromelain, which was apparently found only in pineapples - something Karin never knew), behaviour (he would wrap his tail around something and hang himself up like a bat to sleep, drawing his wings around his body) and theories about where he might have come from (Sousuke mostly believed he was an escaped or discarded government experiment - Karin’s money was on aliens).

If there was no one in the café, Sousuke would bring Toshiro out. The little dragon was more than happy to sit on a plate eating extra blueberries Karin snagged from the back (Sousuke joked that she was spoiling him), or snuggle into her hand.

She was ever so slightly jealous of Sousuke, though she never said it.

(She was pretty sure he knew anyway.)

*

The day after her drunken graduation celebration, Karin clocked in for work as per usual, having downed a couple of painkillers and a _lot_ of water to try and kill her hangover. It was a normal Sunday morning in the café - slow, for which she was thankful. She was also thankful that her friends had not believed her last night. Stupid, that’s what she was, stupid, telling them all about Toshiro.

Her world was abruptly shaken up come lunch time.

She’d been restocking the apple tarts, when the bell over the door jingled. She looked up to see _him_.

“Sousuke! Good afternoon. What can I get for you?" She greeted, customer service mask in place, hiding her confusion. He had _never_ come to the shop outside of his Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, not once in the eighteen months since he’d started.

“Hello Karin. The usual flat white, and make yourself something as well, if you please. I’ve a proposition for you best heard over a drink. I’ll pay, don’t worry.”

“Um... okay then.” She rang up his double shot flat white and a cappuccino with a pump of hazelnut for herself. He swiped his credit card with little care, and she handed him his receipt, hand shaking slightly.

“I’ll be with you in a minute or so.”

He nodded in acquiescence, before going to sit at his usual table. Ururu was already halfway through the drinks, though just as confused as she was.

“What do you think he wants, Karin?”

“I don’t know, I’m just as confused as you. But hey, he’s buying me a coffee, which _God_ , I could use right now, so I guess I’ll at least hear him out.” Internally, Karin was a mess. Was this about Toshiro? It probably had something to do with him, it was the only thing that really connected her and Sousuke. What could possibly have happened that he’d come in looking for her? Had Toshiro been taken? Was it because of what she said last night? But then he said it was a proposition.

What on Earth was this about?

Ururu shrugged and said, “That seems fair. Holler if you need anything.”

“You too, okay? Don’t be afraid to ask for my help if you’re having problems, I’m still technically on the clock.”

Karin made her way to the table with the drinks, sliding one across the table to Sousuke and placing the other in front of her as she sat down.

“So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked, adding a packet of raw sugar to her drink and stirring as she spoke.

“As I said earlier, a proposition.” He took a drink of his coffee, before setting it back down. He seemed to steel himself before he spoke. “Would you be interested in adopting Toshiro?”

Stunned, she did not answer him, and so Sousuke took it upon himself to elaborate.

“My business is requiring me to relocate, to Australia. Toshiro is... he is made for the cold weather, which suits him very well living here, but he would not cope with the Australian climate, it’s far too hot for him. He... He would likely die very quickly if I brought him with me. I care about him too much to allow that to happen.”

Stammering, she spoke. “I-I couldn’t possibly, coul-couldn’t take him from you, he wouldn’t...”

“Please, Karin. My plane leaves tomorrow, and, if I can’t leave him with you, my other options are to bring him with me or abandon him. Either would result in his early death. I know you well enough that I trust you with him, and I know he likes you.”

Karin closed her gaping mouth, and thought on it for a while. She knew that he was omnivorous, and could eat just about anything humans could, so it wasn’t like she’d need to spend money on buying him special food or anything. He was small, and easily concealable, and knew to be quiet around other people.

How bad could it be?

“Okay,” she said, her quiet voice carrying in the still air between them, and Sousuke visibly relaxed.

“Thank you,” he breathed, almost as silent as her.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook with a snowflake on the cover. “I’ve written out for you everything you need to know. I’ve told you most already, but just in case you forget any of it, it’s all in here.”

She accepted it with trembling hands, running her hands over the cover before setting it to the side of her cup. She reached out a hand again when Sousuke brought his hand to his collar, and Toshiro obediently stepped out onto his palm. The tiny dragon was deposited into her hand, and Sousuke ran a quick finger down his back before withdrawing, the little thing watching him go.

“I need to go. I’m sorry that this is so rushed, but I don’t have a lot of time. Thank you for the coffee, and for agreeing to take him.”

“No, thank you. He’ll be safe with me. I promise.”

He smiled at her, before looking at Toshiro. “Goodbye, little one.” Sousuke stood and swept out the door, pausing once to look back at them, before he left. Forever.

Karin sighed, tension in her shoulders as she looked at the dragon in her hand, still staring at the door where his old master had just left.

“Guess it’s you and me now, hey buddy?”

Toshiro looked back at her, regarding her with those crystal-like eyes, before he scampered up her arm to her shoulder, tucking himself under her hair at the back of her neck, clinging to the collar of her work shirt. The tension completely drained at the obvious display of acceptance, and she smiled to herself.

“You and me against the world.”


End file.
